Sir Keir Starmer has said it is Ed Miliband’s decision whether Britain drills for oil and gas in the North Sea, claiming he has no power in the matter. The Telegraph has more.
The Prime Minister claimed he had no power to approve more licences and insisted that the final call lay with the Energy Secretary.
Labour is under mounting pressure – including from Donald Trump – to approve new extraction at Rosebank and Jackdaw, two fossil fuel sites in the North Sea, after the Iran war caused energy costs to spiral.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservatives, said that Sir Keir could make the decision to drill today and accused him of “hiding behind” Miliband.
Critics have already claimed that Miliband wields too much power over the Prime Minister after he successfully led opposition to the UK allowing the US to strike Iran from British bases.
Despite the energy crisis, Miliband has reiterated his vocal opposition to North Sea drilling, arguing repeatedly that it would not bring down prices.
When Badenoch challenged Sir Keir to approve the licences, the Prime Minister insisted that current laws prevented him from overruling the Energy Secretary.
Sir Keir suggested any move by Miliband to drill would be a legal decision rather than political, saying: “It’s absolutely clear that the quasi-judicial duty of the legislation rests with the Secretary of State.”
He added: “The only way forward is to go further and faster on renewables and the leader of the Opposition’s approach is to outsource our foreign policy and let the US decide whether we go to war, to outsource our energy policy to Russia and Iran and let them set the price of energy. I will never do that, because it’s not in the British national interest.”
Badenoch had questioned whether it was Sir Keir or Miliband, who has been touted as a potential leadership contender, who was really in charge.
The Tory leader said: “The Jackdaw gas field could be up and running before winter. All that gas would be used here in the UK to heat 1.6 million homes – that is enough to power Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex put together.
“So will the Prime Minister approve the licences or is the Energy Secretary running the Government?”
Badenoch added: “He is hiding behind so many people. He is the Prime Minister, he can make the decision today, he can. He is so weak, he’s the first person to be pushed around by the Energy Secretary.”
She later shared an image of Sir Keir with his head in his hands shortly after PMQs with the caption: “TFW [that feeling when] Ed Miliband is running the Government.”
Worth reading in full.
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The oil crisis is exactly what the net zero brigade wants
Energy scarcity is the main way of achieving the ultimate objective of the green agenda
The net zero fanatics have been loudly complaining about how the soaring cost of fuel in the wake of the Iran war is hitting us all, gleeful for the chance to blame our reliance on fossil fuels: petrol retailers are guilty of “price gouging” and “racketeering”, while oil giants are holding us all to ransom.
According to Zack Polanski, the leader of the Greens and the new champion of metropolitan liberals, we should immediately freeze energy bills, with the cost paid by a higher windfall levy on North Sea oil (conveniently ignoring the fact that at 78 per cent it can hardly go much higher, although of course it is hard to be sure Zack realises 100 per cent is the limit).
The Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has said a plan is being prepared to help people on benefits with their energy bills, conveniently forgetting that it will only increase the incentive to live off the state, instead of working, while Ed Miliband, the Energy Security and Net Zero secretary, has promised to intervene in the market if prices rise much further.
But hold on, wasn’t “degrowth” the ultimate objective of the green agenda? And wasn’t energy scarcity the main way of achieving it? In reality, it is hard to understand why the Left isn’t celebrating the energy crisis. This is exactly what they wanted all along.
The net zero lobby was determined that we should close down oil and gas production in the North Sea as quickly as possible, even if it meant we were completely dependent on imports that might vanish from the market at any moment.
It championed switching as quickly as possible to wind and solar power, even though the sun doesn’t shine as often as we would like it to, and wind, even along the admittedly blustery North Sea coast, is always intermittent.
It never complained about the over-regulation that made building nuclear plants far more expensive in Britain than anywhere else in the world, even though it is the only reliable alternative to fossil fuels.
And it ignored warnings that manufacturing was collapsing under the weight of industrial energy prices that are among the highest in the world, sanctimoniously lecturing everyone that it was more important to maintain “moral leadership” on climate change than to secure the supplies of everyday products that we all need to survive.
The end result was always inevitable. Energy would be a scarce and unreliable commodity, something that might be available as an occasional treat, but which we should not expect to rely on.
The Telegraph: continue reading
Oil is about The Law? Really? 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name. Minister Starmer is not Prime.